Syria civil war - Page 9

UNITED NATIONS – Syria’s foreign minister told world leaders Saturday that his country is “marching steadily” toward the goal of rooting out terrorism—and “victory is now within reach.”

Hezbollah has more than 10,000 fighters in southern Syria ready to confront Israel, a commander for the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group has said.

Two years after the nuclear deal was signed by Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic is reported to have boosted its financial support to Hezbollah to $800 million a year, a dramatic increase from the $200m. it was said to be giving its proxy when sanctions were in place.

Jordan and Russia said Monday a ceasefire brokered with the United States for southern Syria was “successful” and the next step would be to set up a safe zone there.

BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces in Syria announced a fresh offensive around the Islamic State’s most important remaining stronghold Saturday, accelerating a global scramble for control of the country’s oil-rich east.

TEL AVIV — Ahmed al-Saedni, the son of Hisham al-Saedni, a senior Salafist jihadist in Gaza who died in an Israeli airstrike, was killed recently in an airstrike by the international coalition led by the U.S. on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, a senior jihadist figure in the Gaza Strip, Abou Baker al-Maqdesi, told Breitbart Jerusalem.

An Israeli satellite imaging company released photographs on Sunday showing the effects of last week’s airstrike on a Syrian weapons base that was attributed to the Israeli Air Force.

United Nations war crimes investigators on Wednesday said they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

Syrian troops and allied forces reached the eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Tuesday, breaching a three-year-old Islamic State siege on parts of the contested city near the Iraqi border, Syrian state TV and a war monitoring group said.

A controversial ceasefire deal between the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadist group and Iran’s narco-terrorist proxy Hezbollah has provided the Shiite militia organization with uncontested control over a large area in Lebanon along the border with Syria, reports Voice of America (VOA).

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement on Saturday accused US-led forces of stranding a convoy of Islamic State fighters and civilians headed for Syria’s Deir Ezzor province under an evacuation deal.

WASHINGTON — Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears to be still alive, a top U.S. military commander said Thursday, contradicting Russia’s claims that it probably killed the top counterterror target months ago.

TEHRAN: Iran’s new defense minister said Saturday the priority was to boost the country’s missile program and export weapons to shore up neighboring allies.

TEL AVIV — Social media users have been venting their anger online over the deal between Hezbollah and the Islamic State with support from the Syrian regime for IS to withdraw from the al-Qalamoun region on the border between Syria and Lebanon.

A senior Israeli official warned the Russian government that if Iran continues to extend its reach in Syria, Israel will bomb Syrian President Bashar Assad’s palace in Damascus, according to reports in Arab media.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel was willing to act to prevent a continued Iranian military presence in Syria, during a three-hour meeting between the two leaders in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Thousands of Iranian-backed fighters in Syria’s central desert region are advancing east, bringing Tehran closer to its goal of securing a corridor from its border, through Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean and providing it unhindered land access to its allies in Syria and Lebanon for the first time.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday he is confident that U.S.-backed Iraqi forces will finish off the Islamic State militants clinging to strongholds that are shrinking in size and number.

A source in the coalition fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime said Hezbollah has confirmed using attack drones in the fight against the Islamic State terror group.

With former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon out of the White House, globalists and hawkish interventionists in the Trump administration are reportedly wasting no time in pushing for a bigger U.S. military footprint abroad.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says the Israeli leader will travel to Russia on Wednesday to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

The Lebanese Army, Hezbollah and the Assad regime’s army opened an offensive on both sides of the Lebanon- Syria border on Saturday to clear ISIS out of a pocket it holds that straddles the frontier.

Lebanese soldiers renewed fire on Islamic State group positions on the country’s eastern border with Syria on Sunday after capturing a third of the territory held by jihadists in the area.

TEL AVIV – In recent weeks, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have advanced in critical pockets of territory directly adjacent to ceasefire zones agreed upon in a number of areas, an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem.

Israel’s military army has carried out nearly 100 strikes in the past five years on convoys carrying weapons to Hezbollah and other militant groups in Syria and elsewhere, a general said Thursday.

AMMAN, Jordan — United Nations agencies have expressed “deep concern” for the safety and security of nearly 50,000 Syrians stranded in the desert near their war-wracked country’s southern border with Jordan.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria has gathered enough evidence for President Bashar al-Assad to be convicted of war crimes, a prominent member of the commission, Carla del Ponte, said in remarks published on Sunday.

TEL AVIV — Amidst what appears to be the death throes of the Islamic State, the group’s propagandists have released undated photos purportedly from the district of Damascus in Syria showing everyday life in the caliphate.

Unidentified assailants shot dead seven members of Syria’s White Helmets rescue service early Saturday during a raid on their base in a jihadist-held northwestern town, the group said.

BEIRUT — For three years, the Syrian city of Raqqa was the Islamic State’s greatest stronghold, featuring heavily in propaganda and providing a launchpad for attacks carried out around the world.

TEL AVIV — Jordan and Israel have increased cooperation in recent days regarding the ceasefire in southern Syria to ensure against Iran filling the security vacuum in swaths of Syrian territory, an Arab intelligence official told Breitbart Jerusalem.

US President Donald Trump called the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah a threat to the entire Middle East on Tuesday, accusing it and Iran of fueling a humanitarian disaster in Syria.

Israel, the United States and Russia continue to discuss Israeli reservations regarding the ceasefire agreement in southern Syria agreed upon by Jordan, Russia and the U.S., an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem.

Israel has revealed for the first time the extent and scope of the humanitarian aid it has been sending across the border to help alleviate the human suffering in war-torn Syria.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration shares Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns over Iran’s presence in southern Syria, and is working with Israel to prevent it, a White House official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

PARIS – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday that Israel opposes the cease-fire agreement in southern Syria that the United States and Russia reached because it perpetuates the Iranian presence in the country.